Over Her Head
Authors: Shelley Bates
Copyright © 2007 by Shelley Bates
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
FaithWords
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
First eBook Edition: June 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56216-4
Praise forPocketful of Pearls
“Absorbing and poignant. With a deft hand, Bates examines how our Lord’s unfailing grace can set even the most broken spirits
free.”
—Deborah Bedford, author of
Remember Me
“This is a book that resonates in the heart. I literally couldn’t put it down.”
—Ciji Ware, bestselling author of
A Light on the Veranda
and
Island of the Swans
Praise forA Sounding Brass
“Readers will appreciate that things are a little topsy-turvy, with spiritual insights coming from unexpected places.”
—Publishers Weekly
“
A Sounding Brass
grabbed me on page one . . . I couldn’t put it down. A great read for a rainy day or any day.”
—Lyn Cote, author of the Women of Ivy Manor series
For the kids in my life: Kailey, Derrik, Spencer, Joshua, and Sarah
Contents
F
irst of all,
my thanks go to my teenage informants, Kailey Senft and Anna Lekomtseva, whose honesty and humor were a gift as they reminded
me of what it was like to be fourteen.
Thanks go to Debrah Williamson, Diana Duncan, Tina Novinski, and Catherine Mulvany, for their help with nailing the story
down.
Thank you to Captain Robert Dixon and to Lieutenant Chris Forrester of the Santa Clara County Coroner’s Office, for all the
information and the tour of the facility on a busy Monday morning . . . a tour that included thirteen bodies and a homicide.
Thank you to Angelique Bagley, Marriage and Family Therapist, who gave me all the information I needed about post-traumatic
stress syndrome and how it would affect a teenager in Anna Hale’s situation.
Thank you to Jennifer Jackson, my agent, and Anne Goldsmith, my editor at FaithWords, both of whom encourage me to “go deeper.”
As always, love and thanks go to my parents, Dan and Carol, who are a constant source of joy as they discover a new world,
and to my husband, Jeff, who makes it possible for me to write and not cook.
And lastly, my respect and thanks go to R.V., who will never know how much her life has touched mine. The events of this book,
while they were inspired by her reality, are entirely fictional.
I love to hear from readers. You can visit me on my Web site,
http://www.shelleybates.com
, or drop me a note at [email protected].
If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us:
Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:
Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul:
Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.
—
PSALM
124:2-5 (
KJV
)
E
ven in November,
when the trees were skeletal and the ground covered in dead leaves and puddles, the jogging trail by the river was still
Laurie Hale’s favorite place to run. Not that she was wild about physical fitness—it was just that something had to be done
about an hourglass figure that had drooped into more of a pear shape. She simply could not go up to a size sixteen on her
next trip to the mall, and that was final.
There are barriers in every woman’s life beyond which she will not go, and a size sixteen was Laurie’s.
Besides, jogging got her out of the house. Going to Curves would do the same, but she’d still be in a gym with people she
knew from church and Anna’s and Tim’s schools. What Laurie liked best about jogging by the river was simply that she was alone.
With a ten-year-old son and a fourteen-year-old daughter, who could blame her for taking extreme measures in order to get
a little peace and quiet?
So what if her sweats were a shrunken pair of her husband Colin’s and her shoes were from the local discount store? No one
was out here at seven thirty on a winter morning. The executive types had already come and gone, taking the commuter train
from the Glendale station into Pittsburgh and leaving the trails to the winter birds, squirrels, and slightly chunky moms.
Laurie’s legs were beginning to ache at the end of her mile. She wasn’t much of a goal setter, but if she had to set one,
it would be getting back to the parking lot without keeling over and dying of oxygen deprivation. She’d nearly reached the
halfway point where she turned around—where the Susquanny River widened a little and a sandbar had built up. Often the herons
would gather there to pick over what the river had tossed up, or to spear minnows on their way past in the shallows. The kids
had loved to play there in the summer. Someone had tied a rope swing into a tree, and they’d drop off it into the deep pool
scooped out close to the bank.
But now the swing was as frozen and lifeless as the tree that supported it, waiting for the sun and the return of the children.
There must have been some high water recently. A log had washed up onto the sandbar, and crows were walking around it like
car salesmen sizing up a new deal. There were clothes draped over it, too.
Good grief. Surely someone hasn’t been swimming?
It had to be forty-five degrees out there.
Laurie jogged a little closer, taking one of the offshoot trails closer to the bank. Maybe it wasn’t a log, after all. Maybe
someone had tossed a bag of old clothes off the bridge instead of taking them to the Salvation Army like normal people did.
But weren’t those branches sticking out? And was that an animal trapped under it? With brown fur?
The river trail, though beautiful and scenic, didn’t change much. That was why Laurie liked it. She didn’t have to watch out
for hazards because she knew where they all were, and she could pay attention to seasonal changes in the scenery without worrying
about falling flat on her face.
So anything different meant a little investigation was in order. Maybe there would be identifying marks among the clothes
to tell her who the litterbug was. She’d march right down to the Glendale sheriff’s office and wake up her cousin Nick or
one of the other—
Good heavens.
Laurie slid down the bank and landed upright by sheer luck. She squinted against the sparkle of the sun on the water and focused
on the pile on the sandbar.
Not fur. Hair. Dark brown, short-cropped hair with a pink streak dyed into it, now drying and rimed with sand.
A green jacket. Jeans.
Bare feet. Slender, pale feet, so cold they were gray.
Laurie let out her breath with a whoosh and then couldn’t get it back again. Her lungs and heart felt as though they were
being squeezed tight with sheer horror.
“Oh, no. No.” Crablike, she scrambled sideways up the bank, her gaze fixed on the sandbar. “It can’t be.”
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the life hadn’t yet left that pitiful, damp body on the sand. Maybe there was still something she could
do.
She yanked her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed 911.
To group: Budz
From: JohnnysGrrl
Shut up. Keep it down low.
EXHIBIT 1
TRANSCRIPT 11/07 07:43:57
MASTER TAPE 203
DISPATCHER: County Communications.
UNID FEMALE: I’m—there’s a—there’s a girl. In the river. Please send someone, quick.
DISPATCHER: Please state your name, ma’am.
U/F: Laurie. Laurie Amelia Hale. I’m Nick Tremore’s cousin. He’s in the sheriff’s office. Please, do we need to waste time
on this? She might still be alive.
DISPATCHER: Ms. Hale, please give me your location.
HALE: I’m on the jogging trail next to the river. [gasps] About half a mile south of the commuter parking lot. The one at
the train station.
DISPATCHER: Are you in need of assistance, Ms. Hale?
HALE: No, it’s not me. There’s a girl on the sandbar in the river. She needs help—don’t you get it? I think she might be dead.
DISPATCHER: Please calm down, ma’am. Is anyone with you?
HALE: No. [Subject is weeping.]
DISPATCHER: I’m sending a marked unit and an ambulance now. Please wait there so they can find you, ma’am.
HALE: Tell them I’ll meet them in the commuter lot. Tell them to hurry.
END TRANSCRIPT 11/07 07:45:32
TAPE 203
PLEASE BE THERE. Please don’t be in a meeting. Please have your phone on you and not in a jacket hanging on a chair somewhere.
After the third ring, Colin answered. “Hey, Lor. What’s up?”
“This is terrible.” Her voice climbed the scale and she worked to bring it under control. “You won’t believe it.”
“What? Was there an accident? Are you okay? The kids?”
“No, no. The kids are in school, and I’m—” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat. “I’m down by the river. They told me
to stay here until they had time to get a statement.”
“You were in an accident? Was anyone hurt?”
Controlling the emotions was like building a muscle. The more you used it, the stronger you got. “No, and no. I was on my
run this morning and found a—a body.”
That sounds so cold
. “A girl, in the river. Nick and his guys and the coroner are here.”
Static crackled in her ear as this information bounced off a satellite somewhere in the atmosphere and reached her husband.
“Laurie, are you sure it’s not just some drunk sleeping it off under the bridge?”
“Nobody sleeps under the bridge in November, Colin. And we’re half a mile downstream from it. It was a girl, around the same
age as Anna, I think. Maybe a little younger. She was washed up on the sandbar across from where the rope swing is. I saw
her from the jogging trail.”
This unembellished recital of facts seemed to convince him, and the unflappable president of Susquanny Home Supply melted
into Colin the normal husband. “Are you all right? It must have been a shock to find—her . . .”
The nice deputy who’d responded to the scene with Nick had used the same word.
Shock
.
“I’m fine. I’m going straight home as soon as they’re done with me, though. My knees are a bit wobbly still.”
“I don’t doubt they are. Want me to come and get you?”
He had a staff meeting at nine, and they both knew it. “No, no. I’ll see you at home.”
She closed the phone and clipped it to the stretchy waistband of her sweats.
The kind deputy, whose name she’d already forgotten, climbed the riverbank and angled up the slope to where she stood on the
jogging trail. Below them, on the bar, two men in navy blue jackets, who had arrived in a white van with “Keystone Removal
Services” discreetly lettered on the side, zipped up the plastic bag containing the girl’s body, hoisted it with a man on
each end, and sloshed through the shallows to the bank.
The tears that she couldn’t seem to control welled up again, and she focused on the deputy, trying to concentrate.
“Feel up to giving a statement now, Mrs. Hale?” he asked. She nodded. “Mind going down to the station? It’s a lot warmer down
there, and we could scare up some coffee for you. Nick should be done here in a couple of minutes, and he’ll go over what
happened with you.”
She was beginning to wonder if she’d ever be warm again. The ambulance driver had brought her a blanket, but the chill was
the kind that only hot soup and a long hug could drive away.
Much to her relief, Nick didn’t ask her to sit in the back of the police car like a criminal. Instead, she sat up front, where
the blast from the heater turned her cheeks fire-engine red, but didn’t do anything to dispel those deep-seated tremors inside
her.
The Glendale sheriff’s department wasn’t very big—just a couple of offices for the sergeants and the sheriff, and an open
area with workstations for the four deputies behind the main counter. Her statement consisted of a few paragraphs on the green-ruled
report form. What was there to say, after all?